Plotting Practice

December 12

 

Mary Rosenblum:  So let's talk about plotting. At it's essential, it's simply conflict and resolution.  Main character has a problem and has to resolve it.  Same for a novel, only the problem is larger.     Sometimes the stakes are higher, sometimes not. Subplots weave in and out of the main plot and create a dramatic arc that can support 75,000 - 100,000 words. When you need a story, try starting with an interesting character and an interesting setting.  Then ask yourself...what kind of problem can complicate this person's life?  An excellent exercise, one that I sometimes give writers workshops, is to draw a 'setting' card and a 'character' card and then see what kind of conflicts you can come up with.  Often, the setting and character will suggest conflicts that might serve a story.  Let's try one.  Someone suggest a setting.
Do you divide into internal and external conflict or try to establish both?
Grocery store!
Mary Rosenblum:  I’d start with whichever came to me first, Charie, and then figure out the second one.
Late at night!
Mary Rosenblum:  Okay, we have a grocery store.
In a small resort town
Mary Rosenblum:  Late at night is good! spooky!  Now we need a character. Okay, see how it grows? Late night grocery in a small resort town.
Guy in a yellow rain coat
Mary Rosenblum:  Who is he though?  We need a quick sketch of the person. Not just the visuals, but the person.
  EMT
Off duty cop
Fisherman just in to town, tired, lonely, crazy
Mary Rosenblum:  Okay, so lets use all three of these characters.  We'll see how we get different plots, eh?  Start with the EMT. He's in the grocery store, late at night, in this small resort town. Why?
He’s in charge of making breakfast for his crew
Heading back to HQ after a run, stops in for a snack
He had a hard shift, car wreck with no survivors
Mary Rosenblum:   Let's go with all of the above. He had a rotten day, has to get groceries.
It's been raining, the reason for the bright yellow coat
Mary Rosenblum:   So. Now we're going to grow the conflict. What can be the thing wrong that's going to power our plot here? Did he recognize a victim maybe?  Someone from his past, but he's not really sure? Someone he thought was dead? Was told was dead?
There was a car seat but no baby on scene
Tell the cop
Wow like that one
Mary Rosenblum:   There you go, Kmart. Nice one!
He tells the cop
Armed robbery occurs while he is in store
Mary Rosenblum:   AND he recognized the dead woman.
And knows she has a baby
His high school sweetheart
Mary Rosenblum:   Or doesn't....but thinks it must be hers, IF it exists. Where is it?  We can have the armed robbery, too, bss.
Fisherman volunteers to look
Mary Rosenblum:   That's a strong external plot. So if we were going to plot a novel, he could get involved in the robbery and ultimately the missing baby/dead girlfriend who is supposed to be dead already, would tie in.  Yeah, maybe the fisherman is the town loser.  And our EMT has never given him a second look.
Maybe the fisherman has the baby
But the fisherman knows a strange crowd moved into the abandoned warehouse on the wharf
Maybe the fisherman witnessed the supposed accident
But the tired off duty cop has given him a real good look
Mary Rosenblum:   But now this guy offers to help him find the missing baby and doesn't question the existence of the baby, the way the cop at the scene did.  And we're off and running. Strangers in town. The missing baby. The woman who was supposed to be dead.  Witness protection program? His high school sweetheart?
She moved away in the middle of the night, no warning,
Mary Rosenblum:   And this was a hit? A staged accident to get her? Because she stumbled into the guy she sent up....one of the people in the warehouse?
Who is the lead guy?
Or hero
Are you saying the fisherman knows all along where the baby is? is he the villain?
Mary Rosenblum:   : I'd say it's our EMT and our crazy, loser fisherman is a strong secondary.
The cop can be the doubting Thomas
Mary Rosenblum:   Maybe he doesn't, but he helps the EMT find the baby and solve the crime. Yeah, the police call it an accident. Maybe someone is getting paid off by the bad guys to call it that. But maybe the detective, who isn't on the take, finally ends up believing these two guys.  

Maybe this is all a dream by the person who supposedly died
Nah
Mary Rosenblum:   You know what, kmart, readers HATE you when they get all involved in a story and then you say 'ha, it was all a dream'. They come haunt YOUR dreams.

oh yezh, big time.
Maybe the woman and missing baby are the wife and baby of the grocery store owner
Mary Rosenblum:     Ah, but this is a small resort town, one. Everybody knows everybody else. That would be part to make plausible. More likely she's a total stranger....to everybody but our EMT.
You can slant this plot for mystery, romance, what else?
suspense
thriller
Mary Rosenblum:     You could make it suspense if the guys in the warehouse are assembling a dirty bomb for SF. That would work for thriller, too.  And our EMT and our crazy fisherman finally get the detective to take them seriously, and the FBI gets called in just before the two of them get killed by the bad guys, and the bomb is intercepted just in time.
Not enough plot. possible missing baby is not enough
Mary Rosenblum:     Well, we have WAY more plot than baby. Now we have a dirty bomb, a terrorist plot against San Francisco. The dead woman and missing baby have become the lead into the larger plot arc. Now you can keep it small. Make it mainstream and very character driven.  The EMT realizes that something he has believed is a lie. So now he questions events in his past. And as he searches for that missing baby, he begins to check up on things he was told, finds out that he was lied to.
His sweetheart moved away because she was with non-custodial parent.
I was going to suggest another character the baby lawyer and his "adoptions"
Mary Rosenblum:     Or the EMT blamed himself for the woman's 'death' all these years and now finds out she never died.
She's why he became an EMT
Mary Rosenblum:     And when he finds out why, he can let go of the guilt that crippled him. Maybe he meets another woman in the process and finally lets himself fall in love. So now you have character driven mainstream with a strong romantic element.
Is it his baby?

You need to read the book to find out.
Mary Rosenblum:     That would make the event VERY recent, Kmart. Might or might not work.
He'd wonder if their kid would've been like this baby
Mary Rosenblum:     So this is a VERY different plot from our suspense/thriller.  Yeah, Charie.
Sci-fi plot: The baby is a clone stolen from a secret lab
So does this situation come up. Start out down one road and then find a need to change?
Mary Rosenblum:     This is what I do every time I write a new story. It's exactly the process I use.
I think we have wandered off in several directions and time periods. It's getting confusing
I know "King" says too play like peeling an onion
Mary Rosenblum:     You DO wander off in multiple directions.  Does this work? Does that work? I think of it as playing with Lego’s.
Does it dead end?
but how do you tie them together
Mary Rosenblum:     You snap a few block together, now add this gizmo, build on that for awhile. If it doesn't work, pull them off and try new blocks, green ones this time instead of blue.  You simply add and subtract until you get something that works for you.

I would think that as the characters take on a life of their own you may have to change plots often.
Mary Rosenblum:      You sure can, lastby.
Would outlining prevent this problem?
What if you get too many somethings? How do you pare it down to size?
Mary Rosenblum:      If you look at what we did here, the EMT who foils the terrorists and the guy who goes back home to dig up the truth about his former girlfriend are probably not the same character. To trim, I pull out my pruning shears, Charie.  I look at all my interesting different branches. Do I like this one best? What about that version? What if snap a red block on over here. Now do I like it better? In the end, I simply shed all the versions that don't really move me. And I write the plot I liked best.
Sounds like a lot of lost key strokes
Mary Rosenblum:      Well, you know, Kmart, what I have found is that if you just jump in and write the story, say 8000 words, and it doesn't work, and the second try at say 8500 words doesn't work, and the third version at 7800 words is just right, you've used up a LOT more keystrokes than a bit of Lego play before you start.  And believe me, I used to write a lot of stories that dead ended or didn't work. Now I make them work first. When I’m happy with my plot, THEN I write the story. I write many fewer words that way.
Do you ever start with the climax and work the plot backward?

Mary Rosenblum:      I have, charie. Start with the climax event. Then you work backwards, figuring what could have forced your character to end up in this particular situation.
So, you do outline
Mary Rosenblum:      Not really, Kamart. I sort of rough out the structure of a story in notes.... my MC starts here, this happens, he does that, then this happens and we reach the climax. This is how it ends.  I do something similar for a novel, but it tends to be longer than three sentences or so.
How many plot "surprises" do you try to include in a novel?
Mary Rosenblum:    Oh, that's a matter of 'feel', Charie. If the novel seems to slow down, I try to come up with something new and interesting to throw at my MC.
Mary, have you ever taken a short story and expanded it to a novel?
Mary Rosenblum:      One, never directly. Three of my SF novels incorporate published short stories in the book.  But a short story idea per se is not large enough for a novel. You need a larger plot idea. I often create universes that are interesting enough I want to play more in them.  I either do more short stories in that universe or use it in a novel. What I am trying to demonstrate here is that plot is flexible, and you're not bounded by 'one story'. Any person, any situation can suggest a wide range of conflicts, complications, interesting plot paths to take.
A novel is just a series of short stories (problems solved) enroute to an final solution
I disagree K.
Mary Rosenblum:      It's not quite that cut and dried. You have scenes that move the story forward, but they're not discrete and you have a main plot arc that supports the weight of the novel.  The scenic dramatic arcs merely add energy to the main arc.
not discrete?

Mary Rosenblum:      They're not independent.
I suppose that is what I was trying to say
Mary Rosenblum:      Well, you CAN look at a novel as a series of 'short story length' work (chapters).  That can make it seem much less daunting than a single 400 page project!  Instead you can look at it as twenty 20-page pieces.
I have read novels that would have made better short stories. How do you know when your plot is just too weak to carry a novel?
Because you want to hook each chapter start and cliff-hang the chapter end
Mary Rosenblum:      Well, hopefully you get feedback from good readers. Or the submissions editor. But you can find a lot of published examples of poor novels and poor writing, alas. Sort, of Charie. But I wouldn't do a 'cliff hanger' at the end of every chapter. Your readers will be snickering by the end. But you do want a strong transition to the next chapter.
Are the scenic dramatic arcs just the "cool " details that aren't necessary to the action?
Mary Rosenblum:      Well, everything in the novel should be necessary to the plot. The visual details enrich the story. You don't want readers looking at a painted canvass backdrop. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird. Would it have been as strong as it was if she hadn't created that town so vividly?
Do you have an example of a scenic dramatic arc? I'm not sure what one is
Mary Rosenblum:      That's simply the dramatic arc of the scene, Charie.  For example, our MC is riding cross country to catch up to the commander and give him critical news before he gets to a battlefield. As he crossed a river, he is nearly swept away by a flash flood.  Maybe he gets helped by some local villager. But he survives, and rides on.
Action, drama, shows character prowess as horseman
Mary Rosenblum:      That scene isn't directly related to the plot now (although maybe the villager who saved him will play a role later on). But it holds our interest during a necessary passage of toime and also enriches the character for us.  Exactly, Charie. So, to sum up, we started with a late night grocery in a resort town and an EMT. We ended up with two plots: A thriller with terrorists creating a dirty bomb to blow up San Francisco, and a romantic mainstream story about a man who finds out a lie has tainted his life.   And had we another hour, we could have come up with two or three more very different plots.
Or made him a better person,
Mary Rosenblum:      Plots are endless. You just need to spend time sitting and playing with mental Legos.  Change characters. : Change setting.
Do you ever vette plots with your test readers before you write a first draft?
Mary Rosenblum:      Sometimes. When I have the disquieting feeling that something is missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. I listen to my hindbrain when it whispers things like this.

 

Thanks for coming, all!   See you Sunday in the chat rooms for our casual chat.